Impressions of Belgrade and Serbia (and some occasional vacation photos!) by a long-term ex-pat.

Friday, March 5, 2010

SKYWATCH FRIDAY =My moon and...?

Well, when I uploaded this photo, it came as a surprise to me. First of all, the moon was photographed with my new 70-300mm VR lens that I was trying out. It is a hand-held shot, obviously taken at night. Instead of making minor adjustments with Photoshop on my big computer, I was using my little ASUS computer using GIMP, an image manipulation that my Linux-operating ASUS uses. All this while watching a bit of TV. I hardly ever use GIMP, so I think what happened is that when I adjusted one of the filters for light or dark, somehow that mysterious 'spaceship' light got thrown in. I must have inadvertently clicked on something else, too. I only saw it when I uploaded the photo to my blog, but I left it, since I kind of like it, even if it isn't natural....unless it really IS a spaceship.

I was going to say what Tash said. Also, I don't care what you did—the image is fantastic! (I don't know what any of that software is; some day I may install PhotoShop and figure out how to use it, though.)

Mars has been pretty visible near the moon lately (supposedly, cuz cloud cover has obstructed the view from here). Maybe this is a Martian flashing you a code message with his intergalactic mirror signaler. He's probably saying, "Send Mushroom Soup recipi, please." :-)Super shot, and keep having fun with that new lens. -Kim

I saw your name in The Road is Mine blog and came to say hi. I went to Belgrade once, many years ago. Your moon shot is outstanding. Don’t understand what your explained though. I just bought Photoshop Elements 8 but I am kind of scared to use it.

The real question is "can you repeat" this. That point source flare is quite nice in the image. Obviously it must be identified as an illustration, but artists do that all the time. In any case, I like your results!

Hi, Chuck! I went back to my GIMP program on my small computer and saw that (I think) this star is called Supernova. The screen on my little computer is only 8 inches, so when it previewed the shot, I didn't see the star, especially since I had zoomed in on the moon.

I don't usually 'fiddle' with photos, other than brightness/contrast and sharpening, and still don't know how to do layers. In ways, I kind of want to stay like Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), who never really wanted to learn French well, in order to remain 'pure'! Ha!

Thanks for all the great pics and information Bibi. I am an American currently learning Serbian in Montenegro. When I saw the title of this post I smiled when I thought about the english 'my moon' and the serbian 'мајмун'.

This is a great shot, Bibi, and an inspiration to space/moon junkies. Guess I'm going to have to get busy with a little help from GIMP or something similar when I re-start my project of recording each named full moon for a year. The "spaceship" looks like another bright heavenly body that might not show up without "help." I often notice that I've included stars, planets, and/or ISS flybys when I pull images into PhotoShop for optimizing. Thanks for this lovely photo; I look forward to coming back.

Smile!

Who am I?

I'm an American woman who's lived and worked in Serbia for over 40 years. I've come to love the people with all their idiosyncrasies, and created this blog to help break some of the negative press about Serbs. I take requests for photos!